Whitney Museum American Art

General Procedures for Digitizing Images from the Collection

These procedures will produce 2 digital image files from a transparency or opaque photograph of works of art . The scanning is done only once, but then two copies of the image will be made, using different settings. The result will be a high-resolution "Master" file in TIFF form and one small JPEG thumbnail, for use on The Museum System. Each scanning station will have different equipment, so this information is provided as a general guide and you will need to customize your own station to your liking. For this report, we will use the Agfa Duo Scan scanner with transparency adapter and a Macintosh G4 with a 21' monitor that has been color-calibrated to the scanner (using Lasersoft Silverfast Ai imaging software) and PhotoShop imaging software

Full version of the whole procedure

Preparation

Make sure all cable connections are secure and equipment is turned on.

1. Check source for dust, check scanner glass for dust, smears; clean.

2. Check source to see if color/grayscale bars are included in photograph.

3. For most images, which are transparencies, the transparency template will need to be on the scanbed (or inside, depending on the scanner)

4. If the transparency is a 4x5 or smaller, get the black slide holders from the shelf/box of scanning equipment, and place the slide in it to scan. If it's larger, just put it on the bed.

4. Place original on scanbed. Handle transparencies by edges to avoid fingerprints. Make sure top is facing front of scanner, face down, and the item is placed squarely up against the corner of the transparency.

Scanning

1. Open Photoshop. Under File Menu choose "Import: Silverfast (AGFA)..."

a. Click on “Prescan” (I have the settings for my Color raw scans at 36 bit; Q factor at 1.5; 1000 dpi; Screen at 667; usually the images are around 40-50 mbyte)

2. Click on "Scan". Keep a detailed list of what has been scanned. I also have the settings above saved

and stored with the “Batch-scan”

Creation of Master file

3. When scan is done, the image will open in Photoshop. Use the zoom tool (spyglass icon) to zoom into the image to quickly check that the image is satisfactory. Image may appear dark and large (memory) And color bars will show (see below):

4. Under “File” scroll down to “File Info” and type in accession number (i.e. 1966.2)

5. Select "Save" from the file menu.

6. Give the image a name (see naming conventions below)

8a. Select TIFF as format

8b. In the dialog box that will come up, choose "IBM order" ;Make sure “LZW” is NOT checked.

7. Save to your folder on the S: drive (i.e. S:\curatorial\your name\source) if you do not have access to the Image Server, please contact IT and the Registrar’s office.

*These MasterFiles will be very large, and we will have to do a few of them, and to keep the image server up and running, WHENEVER YOU SCAN AROUND 700MB IT IS IMPERITIVE THAT YOU BURN A CD OF THE RAW IMAGES AND DELETE THEM FROM THE S DRIVE. The smaller JPEG's can stay on the hard disk and be the working copies.

Naming images:

Images should have 2 parts to the name. The first part is the accession # of that work of art. If the accession # is not in the book or resource you are working with, it will be necessary to go into the collections database to look up the work, and get the accession #.

It might look like this: 1966.2

Name the file 66_2.tif

Other possiblities for naming:

T.1.2001 T1_01.tif

1966.2ab 66_2ab.tif

96.242.16a-kkkkkk 96_242_16a_kkkkkk.tif

So the Master File final name might be: 66_2.tif

Choose appropriate folder for project and file type (S:\ curatorial \ yourname \ source) and click "Save".

The Following steps are to create the 2^nd version of the image (A smaller size) requiring less memory.

Cropping

1. If the image is not squarely within the scan, Open the “Measure Tool” and click on the top left corner of the artwork (or frame) and WHILE HOLDING the MOUSE KEY, go to the top right corner of artwork (or frame), release.

2. With the top line drawn from the Measure Tool, go to “Image / Rotate / Arbitrary” and click “Ok”

3. The image should shift slightly within the scan.

4. Rotate the image so that the work appears correct (see below):

5. To adjust lightness and darkness, go to “Image” select “adjust / levels” and with the triangles, adjust the color and darkness (see below)

*PLEASE BE AWARE THAT COLOR CORRECTING IS NOT BEING COVERED IN THESE STEPS AND THAT YOU ARE CORRECTING TO YOUR OWN MONITOR; TO BEST DO THIS, YOU NEED A LIGHT BOX TO WORK AGAINST WITH THE SLIDE OR TRANSPARENCY*

6. Choose the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” from the toolbar

7. Using the mouse, draw a box around the image area itself. Again, If not included AS the piece, leave out the picture frame as close to or no background.

8. Click on “Image/crop” to crop, click outside it to start over.

*Never crop the signature out. When unsure about cropping - ASK.

9. Resize the image. Under the "Image" menu, select "image size". The Museum System images will be a maximum of 1500 pixels (at the greatest dimension) So if an image is a Vertical image set the height to 1500 and the horizontal will automatically be less. Opposite goes for Horizontal images.

10. Sharpen the image. Go under the "filter" menu and choose "Sharpen:sharpen"

11. SAVE AS. IMPORTANT!!!! THIS STEP MUST BE DONE EXACTLY OR YOU WILL HAVE TO DO THE SCAN OVER. You want to save a copy of this image, not save your changes to the original Master file. To do this, you must choose "Save AS" under the File menu. NEVER choose "Save" or you will over write the Master file and have to do it over.

If you do not get a dialog box at this point, asking for information for the copy image to

save as, then that means the original has just been changed, and you'll

have to start the scan over. If you get the Save dialog box, then continue......

Give the file a name, (see naming guides) then .jpg. (this will be the same as the name of

the master file, except replacing .tif with .jpg).

JPEG Options: select “Medium” Quality 6

12. Choose the appropriate folder (i.e.. S:\ curatorial\ yourname\ source).

13. Select JPEG as the format from the pop up menu.

14. Click on Save.